BDS Book Festival: Good Clean Food + Chat with Beth Leibson

Today I share the next author interview and giveaway in the current Backdoor Survival Book Festival. Beth Leibson, one of the authors of Good Clean Food, is joining us for an interview and is also providing one lucky reader with a free copy of her book.

I can not tell you when exactly I became a closet food activist but it was years ago. Having grown up chubby, okay fat, I started reading books by Adele Davis, Covert Baily, and others in the 70s and 80s. It did not take me long to realize that the food I was eating was causing my pudginess as well as other woes such as acne and mood swings.

Although food fads have come and gone, the need to keep toxic food away from the dinner table has always been my goal. These days the red meat I eat is organic and when I can afford it, I purchase organic chicken, fruits and vegetables as well. Luckily, I live in an enlightened community where GMO crops are banned and as much as possible is grown in a pesticide free manner.

Enjoy the interview with Beth and be sure to check out the details of this week’s giveaway below.

An Interview with Beth Leibson

Good Clean Food is about the health dangers associated with genetically modified organisms or GMOs. It also talks about the advantages of natural and organic food.

What type of research did you have to do while writing your book?

I was lucky enough to be able to work with world renown expert Dr. Samuel Epstein on this project. Dr. Epstein has devoted his life to fighting GMOs. Most of my research focused on the scientific and statistical research.

Every book, fiction and non-fiction, includes a message. What message do you hope my readers will take with them after reading Good Clean Food?

I have long been fascinated by the importance of good nutrition, but to be honest, I didn’t know a lot about GMOs before I began. Good Clean Food points out the reasons for avoiding GMOs and other pesticides in food and provides practical advice on eating healthily.

Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

I am a freelance writer and editor who works mostly in the healthcare arena. I live in New York City with my two children.

Do you have plans for another book?

My next book, also from Skyhorse Publishing, is about life after cancer and healthy survivorship. It addresses emotional, medical, and professional concerns. I am very excited about it because I do not know of any other resource that brings all of this information in one place.

The Book Giveaway

A copy of Good Clean Food has been reserved for one lucky reader. Here is this week’s question:

What is your greatest concern when it comes to healthy eating?

To enter the giveaway, you need to answer this question by responding in the comments area at the end of this article. The deadline is 6:00 PM Pacific next Wednesday with the winner notified by email announced in the Sunday Survival Buzz. He or she will have 48 hours to claim the winning book.

Note: If you are reading this article in your email client, you must go to the Backdoor Survival website to enter this giveaway in the comments area at the bottom of the article.

The Final Word

Pesticide residue, pink slime, GMOs, and now Fukushima contamination; with each passing day, more barriers to healthy eating present themselves. This is an important book that can help you make wise food- shopping choices that will enhance your health, not harm it.

I hope you will enter the giveaway to win your own copy of this must-read book!

Enjoy your next adventure through common sense and thoughtful preparation!Gaye

If you have not done so already, please be sure to like Facebook which is updated every time there is an awesome new article, news byte, or link to a free survival, prepping or homesteading book on Amazon. You can also follow Backdoor Survival on Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ and purchase my book, The Prepper’s Guide to Food Storage from Amazon.

Related Articles:

Between GMOs, hormones, and pesticides, it sometimes feels like our food has become so artificial that shopping smart is impossible. How can we know for sure that the food we buy isn’t putting us at risk? If you’ve got questions, this practical, positive guide has answers. In it, leading public health advocate Samuel Epstein, MD, and coauthor Beth Leibson provide all of the information you need to make the best food choices for you and your family—in language you don’t need a PhD in biology to understand.

Bargain Bin: Today is all about books. Listed below are all of the books in the current Backdoor Survival Book Festival. There are both fiction and non-fiction titles and a bit of something for everyone.

If you covet an e-Book reader, consider the Kindle. Prices start at $119 although a basic kindle is only $69. And if not, at the very least pick up the free Kindle app so that you can read Kindle books on your PC or favorite electronic device.

The monthly specials at Emergency Essentials feature discounts of up to 35% off sometimes a bit more.

I eat a lot of fruit (usually three whole fruits a night as a bedtime snack) and in a SHTF situation, fruits will be something I will really miss. The Freeze-Dried Fruit Favorites Combo from Emergency Essentials is something I use all year round. With the grocery store a 20 mile round trip journey, I like the thought of being able to rehydrate my own fruit, in the quantity I want, at a moments notice.

But not to be left out, there are veggies too. The deluxe supply of Freeze Dried Vegetables includes 18 #10 tins of the following veggies in various quantities: Broccoli, Cauliflower, Sweet Corn, Green Beans, Green Peppers, Green Peas, Mushrooms, Potato Dices, Spinach, and White Onions. Lately I have been using FD veggies instead of fresh for my homemade soups. There is not fuss, no waste and in the long run – given local prices – the cost is less.

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My eBook, The Prepper’s Guide to Food Storagewill provide you with everything you need to create an affordable food storage plan, including what to buy and how to store it. Nothing scary and nothing overwhelming – you really can do this! Now available at Amazon.

My greatest concern is rising food prices. Processed foods with all the effort / energy expended to pack the product is less expensive then fresh and organic foods. With price pressure and declining incomes in the short term eating processed foods is a way to save money. In the long term they will damage a person’s health.

There are two things that are of major concern to me right now. One is the food coming in from the West coast that is being bathed in radiation from Fukushima. So we are not buying sea food nor ordering it in restaurants at this time. The second is the amount of canned food I am seeing at our local groceries that is coming in from China. How do you spell Toxic? I was starting to pour some name brand apple juice for a grandson when we noticed that the plastic bottle was stamped made in China. It had slipped past me in the grocery. My advice to everyone is to grow as much of your own food as you can and visit your Farmers Markets when in season and learn to can and preserve food for yourself. If you have grown it, you will know what is in it. Otherwise who knows where or how it was truly grown?

My greatest eating concern is how little control we have over our food choices. The government has set it up so that the corporations (ie, Monsanto) are protected, and the people are left in the dark. I look at the ingredients in the food I buy and I don’t even know what half of them are, let alone where they came from or how safe they are. I believe that we have “modified” our food so much that our bodies no longer recognize it as food (ie, gluten intolerance). My family and I are trying to eat as stripped down a diet as we can.

…that I won’t be able to find organic food at a store or online. Now I purchase most of my organic food online & at the Hutterite’s Farmers Market during the summer months. We have seeds for a garden, even a small greenhouse. But would rather buy than plant until push comes to shove. Our grocery stores do not have anything organic.

My greatest concern when it comes to healthy eating would be rising food prices do to the freeze the western states received around the end of 2013 to the beginning of 2014. Also the drought that is hurting most states in the U.S. I grow my own garden but learning that even the seeds I buy from the market are genetically modified as well. So I don’t know where to turn.

Gaye – don’t count!
Katrina – do a web search for heirloom seeds. That may not guarantee non gmo’s but usually is safe – safer than most store bought seeds.
In addition there may be people here that would be willing to send you safe seeds.

Katrina, Baker Creek Heirloom seeds guarantees non gmo, they are tested & certified! They are for midwest growers, if you need northern, their sistet company Comstock & Ferre(?) And California company…can’t think of it right now, but check them out! http://www.rareseeds.com ! They are only an hr drive from me and I only purchase seeds from them unless they’ve run out…they’re out of catnip. LOL!

My greatest concern is not REALLY knowing where our food comes from. Even if GMO-labeling was required, doesn’t that only cover cans, boxes, and bottles? What about produce, grains, dairy, meat and fish? What about the local vegetable stands, how can we be sure those farmers planted only non-GMO seeds? It worries me tremendously.

We are being herded into a diet of “food” that is poor in nutrients, that is made from things that are unprounceable, that have been modified in strange ways, and from foreign countries that have extremely poor sanitation. But ask the average sheeple about any of these things and they are both totally ignorant and uncaring about any of this. But the rest of us can do everything possible to protect ourselves and our families by growing heirloom plants from seed and seed saving. We can shop the local farmers markets. We can choose to buy local brands rather than national ones. Yes, it is hard, sometimes impractical, and sometimes impossible. But every change for the better in our diet means less contaminates in our bodies. I have little faith in our elected officials to do anything about GMO’s and food additives. There is too much money involved ready to line their pockets.
Off soapbox mode.

What ever happened to the good old food that was homemade by our mothers and grandmothers? Now it is fast food, GMOs and things that are added we cannot pronounce and cannot understand. How I long to get my garden planted this spring so I can can my food and KNOW what is in it.

What is healthy food anymore? If it doesn’t come out of your own garden from heirloom seeds, I’m afraid everything from the store is tainted in some way. Working for a paycheck and have a two hour + drive to and from work daily, doesn’t give much time to “homestead” and prepare foods from scratch. Hopefully the rat race can slow down and I can learn to make better food choices.

I’m learning to grow my own food, but it’s a struggle. I use non-GMO seeds when I can. I haven’t learned to harvest and save seeds yet. I’m in my mid 70’s and this is a difficult learning curve. But I keep on trying. 2/3 of my family are vegetarians, so we consume lots of veggies. I don’t look forward to the day when it all hits the fan, but we are trying to get prepared day by day. This book will be a valuable tool in our quest as preppers.

Cost is a huge factor, even the cost of heirloom seeds has gone crazy! After fukushima hit we quit eating seafood from the pacific and tried to limit our dairy from the west coast (hard, considering so much on the mkt for dairy is from there). I raise our own chickens, and tried growing feed grains, too. It’s a lot of work, time and money. A huge learning curve, too. It’s not like the “good old days” when your parents and grandparents had generations of experience to fall back on. I’m actually teaching my in-laws these days how to grow tomatoes! Oh, and our soil is real awful, mostly clay and rocks, that doesn’t help. 🙁 this year I plan a huge herb garden and am hoping to be able to sell at farmers mkt. My daughter (16) is planning cut flowers. She just raised a flock of chicks and sold them for $12 each, made almost 300! Quite the little business woman I have raised! LOL!

My biggest concerns are radiation. I guess I’m surprised that we don’t hear more somewhere on the news about it. My next concerns are GMOs. I just can’t see how that will be good for people. I need to work harder at starting a garden.

My greatest concern about eating healthly is the rising prices of fresh, simple earth foods. I support the organic former also, when I can afford it. At a minimum, I’ve at least started supporting the organic dairy farmer even though I pay twice the price for a half-gallon milk compared to a gallon of non-organic milks. I now buy an organic milk from cows that are also grass-fed. They are ever so slowly beginning to sell some great organic products at our local Super-Walmart.

My biggest concern is when I look at my food storage and I know there are things that have a short shelve life, like yeast, baking powder, cooking oil and the like. I use these items all the time and I will miss them.

My greatest concern is the cost of eating healthy. It is like the prices are made to make you fat and lazy. People are getting addicted to the chemicals and have no idea what it is doing to their bodies. Diverticulosis and cancer are on the rise. These are related to the foods we eat. If you look and the major health concerns in the world compared to the western culture, you see the damage that the chemicals do. The US is viewed as fat slobs around the world. I believe that this is because people blindly go with the status quo, and they dont think for themselves.

I have a couple major concerns.
1. The cost of trying to eat healthy
2. Discovering the hidden bad things in our foods and products we use.
3. Meeting our goal of trying to be completely chemical free in the things we used.

We have a large family, and the costs are astronomical to feed a family in a healthy manner. It is much cheaper to feed our family when we weren’t concerned about quality and chemical free foods. We were blind, but now our eyes have been opened, and we try to do what we can on our budget.

We have not yet gone completely organic or chemical free, due to costs, but everyday, through websites like yours and research, we are getting closer.

I am so glad that there are resources such as this to teach us all, how harmful things are and why we need to educate our families and all try to eat clean.

Also, in this discovery, there are lots of chemicals in things we use as well. Skin care, lotions, and soaps.

Our goal is to be chemical free as soon as possible, and with your site/books, it’s making it much easier for us.

My greatest concern is the quality of the food available on the open market, GMO of hybrid. Nutrition is way last in the specifications. The veggies I grow are in isolated raised beds with vermiculite, peat moss and home made compost. My cherry tomatoes are better than M & M’s!

My greatest concern is about how the food was grown or raised; then how was it processed. Chemicals have been used for so many years that I wonder how or if we can be detoxed. Then trying to grow our own vegetables and fruits. I still have to buy meat because I am not ready to be a vegetarian.

My two greatest concerns are not being able to afford healthy food, unfortunately the unhealthy “foods” are more affordable, and being able to actually find out which foods are actually healthy. It seems like a lot of companies are doing their best to hide what is actually in their products. There are a bunch of products that claim to be organic, non com, pesticide free…etc but actually aren’t, so on top of the prices, it can be overwhelming trying to figure it all out.

Daniel. I have worked with Green Giant and many other commercial growers all my life. I have worked primarily with green beans and sweet corn, but have worked with potatoes and crops that grow in the muck. Celery, carrots, and some greens. I have worked mostly in Wisconsin and Minnesota but have worked in the artichokes in California. Anyone that tells you they grow crops without the use of any pesticides is are flat not telling the truth. The most dangerous pesticides in the world is a group called “organic phosphates”. Malathion is a relatively safe one. (what they use to spray mosquitos in California with) Its big brother is a killer. Parathion, ethyl and methyl. Any crops can be sprayed with this group of pesticides and still be called ORGANIC.
You all can lash me with wet noodles, but I wouldn’t waste my money on organic products. How many gardeners do you know that doesn’t have to fight insects. How well do they do, and they are on a small scale? Show me a 50 acre field of crops where the owner says he doesn’t have problems with pest, and I will show you someone that has some way to blow smoke and I can tell you where he is trying to blow his smoke.

My number one concern is the heavy metals and filth that we import from China
in our food. Anything with the word ‘China’ on it I avoid and anything that says ‘distributed by —‘, anything other than USA, I put back on the shelf and back into the freezer at the grocery. Carry an index card or a list in your phone with the brand names that are safe to eat and safe to serve to your family. Regarding John R, just above my comment on Daniel’s comment: just last summer I had an opportunity to speak in private with the owner of a commercial greenhouse. The owner said that they only use insecticides that are considered ‘organic’. But the owner also confided that the concentration that must be used to actually control the insects is many, many times the normal concentration that would be found in nature. And this makes the organic insecticides very dangerous. But, in this way they can label the produce ‘organic’. Wash all produce and fruit before eating.

Ruby, I am becoming a Dr Oz addict. On one show this week he told of some different veggies that you are wasting your money on by buying “organic”. It was mostly fruits and veggies that has thick skins. Avocados, bananas, oranges and the like. What he doesn’t know is that there are different types of insecticides to kill different kinds of insects. Most insecticides kill on contact. This just leaves some residue. Some insecticides kill by the insect eating it. Usually this just leaves some residue, but some insects don’t eat on the surface of the crop, but have “piercing, sucking mouth parts”, like the mosquito. To kill these insects, you need a pesticide that will absorb into the crop, or translocate in the crop. These are systemic pesticides. No way are you going to wash them off. I had a thriving business in Tennessee spraying tobacco. Tobacco had all kinds of insects to eat on them. It took all 3 types of insecticide to kill all the different pest. Some genius came up with an insecticide that you mixed with the fertilizer and the roots of the crops picked up the insecticide and translocated it throughout the plant. That eliminated the need to ever spray the tobacco leafs again. This insecticide was used on various crops. That put a lot of sprayers out of business. Let the people just keep chewing that tobacco.

PS. I started my spraying career spraying tobacco. I was a 2 pack a day smoker until I realized what we put on tobacco. I quit cold turkey in 1971. PPS. Some farmers still have a barn full of DDT. They are getting it somewhere.

I no longer hold Dr Oz in any type of esteem. I was an avid fan of his until one day last year when he had two guests on the show advocating horse meat as being a lean and healthy food choice. We in the horse community know for a fact that horse meat is highly toxic to humans, especially our bone marrow, because of the routine painkillers and other chemicals given to all horses on a regular basis. It was painfully obvious that Dr Oz doesn’t do his research, because there he was at the end of the show, saying, “So, there you have it, folks. Horse meat is healthy choice for your dinner table” I lost every bit of resp I ever had for him that day. I no longer watch, because I have no idea if what is said on his show is true.

Robynne, I just started watching him since January. January he was helping people that started New Years resolutions. You know most all resolutions have to do with loosing weight and eating more healthy foods. His 2 week quick start diet seems to be working for me and the spices he recommends for various health problems, I have already been on for about 6 months. Turmeric, garlic, cyanine, ginger, apple cider vinegar, these kind of things. My blood pressure meds have come down from 40 mg a day to 10 mgs a day. My diabetes meds have come down from 2000 mg a day to 500 mgs a day. Some of the advice he gives is great, some, you may need to research.

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MEET GAYE

I'm Gaye, just an ordinary gal trying to make sense of our changing world. I am addicted to prepping, DIY projects, adult coloring books, and ballroom dancing. I live what I call a strategic life and believe you should too. Everyone needs to prepare for the worst and live for the best. Won't you join me?

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